


Afterwards

by Meatball42



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Characters confused about their own relationship tags, F/M, Infidelity, Loss of Trust, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Queer Themes, Relationship Discussions, Relationship Negotiations, Tags Are Hard, This was meant to be short and shippy but no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 02:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9214235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: Steve comes home to find his friend in bed with his lover. It’s not an easy situation, and as it turns out, there’s not an easy solution.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yeomanrand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/gifts).



> 1) Set in a slightly alt-verse where Cap2 didn’t happen, they just caught a glimpse of the Soldier and tracked him down. (aka I wrote this forgetting that SHIELD was gone, soooooo……)
> 
> 2) You may disagree, perhaps strongly, with some or many of the viewpoints and stances described herein. I would not promote any of these characters’ opinions or actions at all, much less over those of any other character. Please don’t take this as any sort of how-to guide for polyamory, and even less my recommendation as such. There are actual resources out there for that, starting with [The Ethical Slut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ethical_Slut), a well-known how-to and a pretty fun read. For anything about asexuality, I the non-ace would recommend [the AVEN site](http://www.asexuality.org) and a reading cap.

Steve’s last meeting at SHIELD gets cancelled, so he leaves the office early and puts on a hipster hat and shades to ride the bus back to Stark Tower. For the few minutes of his ride home every day, Steve gets to pretend that he’s not a superhero, but an average Joe heading home early to surprise the mister. He grins out the window, watching Eighth Avenue go by in fits and starts. Manhattan, and the twenty-first century, have finally started feeling like home.

At Columbus Circle, Steve hops off the bus, making sure to thank the driver, and heads for the Tower. The security guards know him by now, and they shoot the breeze with him while going through his security checks. Eventually, Steve say his goodbyes and excuses himself to the private elevator tucked discreetly away from the public eye: the only easy access to the Avengers floors, though no less secure than the rest of the Tower.

When he reaches the sixtieth floor, Steve starts minding his footsteps. The elevator opens straight into his and Bucky’s suite, and lately Bucky tends to nap at odd times. Indeed, the coffee table in the lounge is littered with a half-eaten Reuben and a half-full glass of lemonade, as though Bucky got distracted and wandered away from his meal.

Steve grins affectionately and tiptoes to their room, gently inching open the door. When he finds it empty, he thinks nothing of it: sometimes, Bucky wants privacy and returns to the guest room for a night. Warmth curling in his stomach in anticipation, Steve pads down the hall to Bucky’s room.

He peeks inside, and has to blink in confusion. Bucky is in bed, but he’s not asleep, and he’s not alone.

Steve’s boyfriend is curled around Natasha so closely that Steve can’t immediately tell what limb is whose. Their legs are intertwined and their arms hold each other close as though something is trying to pull them apart. They are clothed, and the sheets wrap partially around their bodies, but… Steve is frozen in place. The scene is somehow more intense than it would be if he’d walked in on them _in flagrante_.

This close, he can hear Bucky and Natasha’s breathing, which is deep and faster than it should be without exertion. They should have noticed his presence, but they seem very focused.

They lay side-by-side, with their foreheads pressed together and their eyes closed. As Steve watches, Bucky’s metal arm around Natasha’s waist shifts up and few inches, pulling them closer together. Natasha’s hand slides into Bucky’s hair and he moans quietly.

Steve can barely breathe in his shock, and he’s powerless but to watch as Bucky pulls at Natasha until she’s laying on top of him. The pair press together without a hint of uncertainty, rearranging limbs and stroking each other’s bodies shamelessly. Bucky’s hand slips under Natasha’s shirt to rest on her hip and Steve hears her tiny gasp, sees her face fall into Bucky’s neck, sees Bucky’s shudder in response.

Despite the lack of nudity, it’s the most sexual thing Steve has ever watched, and the ice spreading through his veins is enough to jolt him into action.

“What the hell is this?”

Natasha springs off the bed at Steve’s quiet demand. Only her grace saves her from tripping over the sheet as it tangles around her. Bucky sits bolt upright, reaching instinctively for a weapon. Both of them are wild-eyed, dishevelled. Natasha lands in a fighting stance, until she visibly forces herself to relax.

Steve’s hands have clenched into fists, and are trembling with held-back strength. He doesn’t know when that happened. “You…”

He glares at Natasha, fighting conflicting urges: she’s a woman, he can’t hit her; but she’s a soldier, and he found her on top of  _ his _ boyfriend, making Bucky make  _ those _ sounds.

Bucky stands up, stands beside Natasha, holds up his hand as though to hold back Steve. He looks cautious, like Steve is a threat.

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Steve,” he rasps. His voice is low like Steve hears it in his ear when they’re making love. It just adds fuel to the fire.

“That didn’t look like nothing!” His voice slams against the unadorned, white walls of the guest room and bounces back. Steve takes a deep, shaky breath, then another. He does not feel more calm. “Get out!”

Natasha nods once, blank-faced, and leaves the room. Steve hears the door to the suite close behind her. Bucky watches her go, and Steve burns.

“I thought we were done with this,” he says, bitter anger dropping his voice low.

Bucky’s eyes narrow, just a bit, thinking fast, and Steve realizes that Bucky doesn’t remember the way he would flirt with girls in Brooklyn before the war. He doesn’t know how much Steve hated to let him walk away into their arms and wonder if this was the woman who would take the love of his life away from him.

“I told you, I knew her from before.”

Steve actually looks over his shoulder in the direction Natasha went, double-taking at Bucky. “You knew her? And- and that means I should expect you to- to-”

“We’re not-” Bucky interrupts him, and for the first time his gaze flickers with barely-visible unease. “I haven’t been unfaithful.”

Steve takes a breath so deep it’s nearly a gasp. It feels like a solid band is wrapped around his chest, like deep water, grief and betrayal and hurt. “So what do you call that, then?” He stabs at the twisted sheets on the bed.

“She just- Sometimes Natasha needs to be held.”

“That didn’t look like ‘being held’!” Steve shouts. He closes his eyes and kneads at his forehead with his knuckles. “I can’t believe this.”

“That’s all it is, I swear.”

“She has Clint for- ‘being held,” Steve says to his palm.

“Clint’s- he has someone else.” Bucky is subdued, as if he just realized why that argument isn’t a good one.

Steve snaps his eyes open, so angry he can feel his face burning red. “If that’s an issue for him-”

“Because it’s-” Bucky grinds his teeth in frustration, finally moving from beside the bed and walking toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. Steve watches him, silhouetted against the buildings of Midtown, late afternoon sunlight turning his skin gold. “I loved her, and now she- needs to be held.”

“So is it nothing, or do you love her?” Steve asks, once he can trust his voice not to break.

“She doesn’t want sex, Steve.” Bucky turns around, and he’s pleading now, not obviously, but enough that someone who once knew every breath of him can tell. “She just wants to be close to someone she can trust. Is that- can you deal with that?”

“Can I-” Steve freezes in shock for the second time in ten minutes. “You want to keep doing this?”

Bucky sets his jaw, and that’s answer enough.

Steve is very proud of himself for making it to the gym, and making sure it’s empty, before punching something with all his strength and letting loose the roar from inside his chest.

~ ~ * ~ ~

Either word has gotten around that something went down, or Steve’s workout, twice as long and far more vicious than his usual, isn’t enough to get rid of the red, hazy aura surrounding him. In any case, the residents of the Tower avoid the TV room after Steve plants himself on the sofa, claims the remote, and proceeds to stare at the television with a scowl last directed toward a den of Nazis.

A hockey game and half an episode of Antiques Roadshow later, Natasha sits down in the armchair next to Steve’s sofa. The shakiness that has developed in his gut begins to tighten to anger once more, but Natasha has her knees curled to her chest, her chin resting on top of them, and there isn’t a hint of smugness in her bearing.

Steve watches her for a long minute. This is the woman he’s trusted with his life every day since they met over two years ago on the Helicarrier. He’s put his life and the lives of others in her hands, and she has never failed. He relied on her as he acclimated to his new world, he trusted her with Bucky himself. After all that…

“Why?”

She turns her head so slowly Steve thinks he should hear a creak. As ever, Natasha is difficult to read.

“Why do you care?” she asks, and she sounds honestly curious. But who can ever tell what the Black Widow is truly feeling?

“You slept with Bucky,” Steve says. He wants her to hear the anger in his voice, but all that comes out is pain.

“I cuddled with Bucky,” Natasha replies. Her face twitches like… doubt? “Most people would think that’s weird, but friendly, not-”

“It didn’t look friendly,” he cuts her off. The images of what they’d been doing, the sounds of their clothes rustling against each other, their throaty breathing, have been distracting him from the television for hours. Steve forces himself to carefully inspect a collection of 18th century stamps. 

“I don’t want to cause problems. It won’t happen again.” Natasha gets up and walks away.

Something in her voice rings in Steve’s ears, and it takes several minutes for him to realize that it sounded like a goodbye.

~ ~ * ~ ~

Bucky sleeps in the guest room. Steve doesn’t sleep.

Luckily, the next day is blocked off for reading reports and preparing tactical and training plans, which are flexible enough to survive Steve’s inattention. He spends the morning in the silent gym, hitting the punching bags until his hands and shoulders ache.

At lunch, he finds Clint shoving a sandwich down his throat, the only one of his teammates brave enough to eat in the communal lunchroom. Steve will later blame his lack of sleep and the way his insides feel like they’re tearing in two for why he walks up to Clint and asks, “Did you know Natasha and Bucky were sleeping together?”

Clint’s over-stuffed smile of greeting twists oddly as he swallows his mouthful of club sandwich without chewing. His eyes have gone flinty. “Say that again?”

“I- saw them yesterday. In our suite.”

Clint goes very still, and Steve starts to doubt Bucky’s claim that Clint has someone else, because Clint looks as murderous as Steve felt the day before. Sure enough, “I’m gonna kill him.” The sandwich falls apart as Clint shoves his chair back with a screech, already sporting a serrated dagger in his dominant hand.

Steve takes his shoulder in a tight grip, holding on despite Clint’s attempts to shake him off. “Clint, you can’t kill him. I know how you feel, believe me, but-”

“I don’t think you do, Cap,” Clint spits. Steve has to shove him back to keep him in the kitchen, away from the elevator.

“This isn’t the Dark Ages, we can’t just kill our lovers or their paramours!” Steve is in a fighting stance facing off with a teammate, a teammate who is just as wronged as he is. For an instant, he remembers feeling so content and full of love just yesterday, and wonders how things have gone this wrong.

The face Steve is used to seeing either with a wide grin or a bored and sarcastic mien is suddenly ugly, twisted with a heavy scowl. “This isn’t a romance novel,” Clint grinds out. “I’m gonna murder the cocksucker that raped my partner.”

“Hold up! Bucky’s not like that,” Steve says firmly. “It was consensual.”

“Nat doesn’t sleep with people unless she has to,” Clint replies. His grip on the knife is so tight that his knuckles are white, but his hand is perfectly steady. “He coerced her somehow.”

“She told me they’d stop,” Steve argues, but he’s unsure again. If Bucky thinks Natasha isn’t sleeping with Clint because he has someone else, and Clint thinks she doesn't want to sleep with anyone, then Natasha is at the very least misdirecting someone. So who’s to say she wasn’t lying to him?

Clint’s eyes narrow. “Start from the top, Rogers.”

More conflicted than ever, Steve obeys.

“I got home early and they were in Bucky’s bed. Not ours,” he clarifies, because, in some small way, it does matter. “They were-” he stumbles over a description.

“Having sex?” Clint suggests.

“No.”

“Kissing?”

“No. They were just…”

“Close?” asks Clint, his fingers shifting on the dagger’s handle.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, uncomfortably shrugging.

Clint studies his face. All of a sudden, all the bottled rage drains from his body, and he chuckles tiredly. “You had me worried for a minute there, Cap.”

Steve frowns. “You- you don’t care?”

The dagger disappears back into its sheath and Clint rubs his hands over his forehead and through his hair. “Nah, man, it’s not my business. If that’s how she wants to play it…”

Steve can sense tension in his teammate’s frame, but nothing like the fire that had taken him a mere minute previously, nothing like a betrayed lover or an avenging friend. Steve’s thrown off-balance, again, at the latest emotional turn on a dime.

“So as long as they’re not fucking, you don’t care that they’re breaking faith?”

He tries not to show how much that hurts; that a man he considers a friend has no sympathy for his lover and friend cheating on him. The shaky mix of hurt and rage that has curdled in Steve’s gut for the past day makes a comeback.

Clint looks up, astonished. “That’s not what I’m saying, Cap. But it’s not like that.”

“Then will someone explain to me what it is that makes this okay?” Steve’s chest heaves again, and he feels the flush rising up his throat. “Is this some- twenty-first century thing, where infidelity only matters if there’s sex involved?”

In the ringing silence that follows Steve’s near-shouting, Clint inspects him with that inscrutable gaze of his, paired with an expression that does, finally, look like sympathy. “Let’s sit down,” he mumbles, as he normally does when he’s not teasing someone or responding to orders. He nods toward the couches in the next room and lets Steve follow him.

Sitting on the couch feels like Steve’s strings have been cut. He buries his face in his hands, feeling the shakiness- like starvation, or hypothermia- begin to tease the edges of him once again. He barely holds back a whimper as the image of Bucky and Natasha in the guest room flashes once again across his darkened vision.

“Cap… I don’t know how to explain this in terms you’ll understand,” Clint starts. Steve looks up at him and finds his teammate looking very uncertain. “It’s not really… Banner might be better for this, or-”

“Just spit it out,” Steve interrupts. The lethargy of defeat that is spreading through his limbs will only get worse as he waits for another person to arrive, to repeat the terrible story, to hear Bruce’s soft-spoken explanation of why Steve really should let his lover go to a woman, to their friend.

Clint chews on his lip. Then his shoulders relax, square into the decisive set that Steve knows well. “Okay. So, years ago, back when Natasha joined SHIELD. You read her file, you know how that all went down.” Clint waves a hand in the air to encompass the setting, mouth twisted in distaste. “Anyway, she was kind of a wreck, not that she let anyone see it. And I’m only telling you about any of this ‘cause it’s relevant, a’right?”

Steve nods.

Clint still fidgets uncomfortably, but relaxes again in determination. “Okay. She was- scared, lonely, whatever. And I was pretty much the only person she trusted. So we- slept together, just in the same bed. For comfort. Or, that’s how I was thinking about it. I had a girlfriend, so I didn’t take it that seriously.”

Steve doesn’t have to know any context to recognize that line, or the thoughtlessness it normally springs from. The disapproving face he makes is one he’s made far too many times.

Clint cringes a little. “Yeah. But like I said, it was platonic. Until my girlfriend and I took a break, for- well not unrelated reasons, but not- she didn’t know about Natasha. And Natasha didn’t know about my girlfriend.” Steve’s expression is enough to make Clint speak faster. “At that point, Nat and I started a relationship. As I thought of it,” he corrects. And then he looks down at his hands, and starts to radiate guilt. “Turns out she thought we’d been together for a while already.”

“Clint,” Steve breathes, aghast.

“I know, it was a big misunderstanding, okay? But when we talked it out, I realized that- that she didn’t want sex in a relationship, at all, that she just did it because I’d pushed her without- I didn’t understand.”

Clint’s hands move in a way Steve’s never seen them, fingers twisting and nails pressing lines onto the vulnerable creases of knuckles.

“My girlfriend and I, we’d planned to get back together after a few months. When we met up I told her everything. She called me ten kinds of idiot and said I couldn’t lead Nat on anymore. We… it took a while, to get back on solid ground, with either of them.”

Clint looks at Steve again, pain etched all over his face. “Nat wants love, just without sex. I don’t- I can’t do that, and either way I’m in a relationship now, and I don’t think she would go for it. I think maybe Barnes isn’t like me, he can love someone without sex. And he just loves you both.”

Clint shrugs, and he looks as tired as Steve feels. Maybe even more so, considering he’s had years to worry over all the ways he and the people he cares about have been hurt.

Steve sinks back into the couch, thoughts swirling. He remains there as Clint gets up and makes himself a drink at the bar Tony’s set into the far wall. He ignores the much larger drink Clint makes up for him; the archer sets it on the table and sits back down with a sigh.

Eventually, a coherent thought makes its way to the forefront. “I don’t want him to love anyone else,” he says, and feels like a child even as he says it.

Clint nods, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the expanse of Manhattan. “I know.”

“But if she wants… to share,” he says awkwardly, struggling to find the words, “and I don’t… won’t he-” Steve swallows hard.

“No,” Clint replies firmly. His shoulders have set again when Steve looks; for a spy, Hawkeye’s not difficult to read. “You and Barnes, you’re too important to each others’ mental health, and to the team. Natasha won’t interfere with that. If you say no, she’ll back off.”

That lines up with what she said yesterday, Steve realizes, even as he resents the implication that he- or Bucky- is mentally unstable. He feels his forehead wrinkle when he remembers Natasha ‘backing off’.

“I don’t want.” He stumbles again, continuing at Clint’s curious look. “I don’t want to hurt him. Or her. Them, I guess.”

That sounds resentful, and Steve… the pain is still there, the heart-ripping ache of betrayal, but… he thinks about Natasha learning that the man she’d thought had chosen her was really in love with another woman, and remembers Bucky saying she just wants to be held, and can’t much find it in himself to hate her for taking the love that was on offer.

“What do I do?”

Clint offers up a half-smile. “Drink that,” he nods to the glass before Steve, “then go get some sleep. Maybe eat somewhere in there. Then think about it some more, and then talk to them. Use all those feeling words, be honest, and listen, and don’t dismiss things ‘cause they sound weird.”

“Is that what you did?” Steve retorts, feeling defensive. He regrets it when Clint’s smile slides away.

“I thought it was something they did to her. That they fucked her up inside, or in the head. Doesn’t matter, in the end. It’s how she is. And she’s my partner, no matter what.” Clint gets up and walks around the couch. “That being said, if you hurt her, I’ll make you bleed, Cap.” He grins in a way that is both friendly and entirely serious, and snags his sandwich on the way to the elevator.

Steve picks up his glass and drinks deeply.

~ ~ * ~ ~

All the rooms of Stark Tower are soundproofed, even their immense windows letting in none of the sounds of the city. Steve wakes at 3 am, bleary and dehydrated, in unfamiliar sheets, and stares around the empty guest suite, missing the sounds of Brooklyn, the heat that would have been pressed against his back. The silence only goes on as he lays there, emotional exhaustion lifted but not banished by resting.

He finds himself on the roof of the Tower, the highest point. It’s a cool, clear night, chill enough to raise goosebumps on his uncovered arms, but retaining enough of summer’s warmth that Steve dangles his feet over the building’s edge and stays there for a long time, watching over the city and pretending the lights are the stars he saw over Europe, with Bucky at his side.

When the sun starts coming up, he heads back to his room to dress for the day. He’s expected at headquarters, and it’ll be difficult to explain his lack of anything to present since he got no work done yesterday, but most of SHIELD can be dissuaded with ‘Something came up’ and a knowing look. Those that can’t, well. They mostly have other things to worry about.

Bucky’s not sleeping in their room. Steve doesn’t go looking.

He drifts through the day, having to fake attention far more than usual. He ends up rescheduling a few intel briefings and donning his hipster hat so he can slowly walk through Central Park, letting the sun warm him from the outside in. Steve finds a bench by a few of the baseball fields and watches a few games. The thoughts that flit in and out of his head range from morose to horrifying, then to hopeful. He thinks about Clint’s story, and Bucky’s determination, and the way Natasha didn’t even try to convince him.

And he thinks about Tony and Pepper and the way they always disappear into the penthouse for a day or two whenever Colonel Rhodes comes to visit.

Around four in the afternoon Steve’s stomach cramps, reminding him that he’s barely eaten since this ordeal began. He makes his way to a food cart and buys four hot dogs, and then a Belgian waffle at the next cart he sees. And then he realizes that he hasn’t seen Bucky in nearly two days, and feels a pang worse than the cramps in his gut.

It’s time to go home.

Bucky is in their suite when he gets back to the Tower, watching QVC slumped along the couch in the living room. Steve sees a two-thirds constructed BLT on the kitchen island as he walks by.

“We need to talk.”

Bucky looks up, and his eyes… they look just as empty, as soulless as they did in the first footage Natasha brought to Steve’s attention, back before she knew who he was. The first time Steve had encountered him in the new millennium, with Natasha by his side, before Bucky had recognized her- recognized _her_ \- and faltered in his attack.

Steve swallows against the roiling of his stomach and quashes the urge to take Bucky in his arms.

He sits down on the couch, and Bucky sits up, muting the TV. They’re nearly two feet apart, and the distance feels wrong, but Steve doesn’t feel like he can or should bridge it. He hesitates, once, twice, before asking the most important question. “Do you still love me?”

Bucky tenses in a miniscule, yet violent manner. He’s holding himself still, tightly wound, and a nearly invisible tremor is shaking his body with the force of his stillness. The only obvious motion is the twitch of a muscle in his jaw. “Yes,” he answers, quiet and intense.

Steve lets out a heavy breath. “Okay. And do you still want to- be with me?”

Bucky’s gray eyes bore into Steve’s, but he remains almost perfectly still. “Yes,” he says with the same inflection.

“Okay.” That’s not everything, but it’s so much more than Steve’s been assuming, these past few days. “I’m glad. Me too.”

They’ve barely started and he already feels like a dishcloth wrung out.

“And… you love Natasha.”

Nothing visibly changes, but Steve can read the pain in Bucky’s eyes, the expectation that this is the end of the line. “Yes,” he rasps.

It still hurts worse than getting stabbed. Steve had been prepared, back before the ice, for a future where Bucky would marry some gorgeous woman, and maybe Steve would find someone who’d settle for him, and they would love each other in secret. People had families, homes, raised kids like that. It wasn’t unknown. He’d never seriously imagined a world where he and Bucky could be together openly, but if he had, he could never have conceived that Bucky would want that unknown woman _anyway_.

“And if I wanted you to stop…” he leaves it open-ended.

Bucky closes his eyes, and in that instant he looks like defeat, like the actual incarnation of defeat. Steve’s pulse races, even as his mind swirls, with the urge to  _ stop _ Bucky from looking that way. From feeling that way.

But he makes himself stay still. He meant it, no matter how it hurts.

“I don’t know,” Bucky whispers, finally.

He’d never told Steve much about his relationship with Natasha, and neither had she. Steve has surmised that Bucky trained her, at some point during his time as the Winter Soldier, and that they’d been romantically entangled. To what extent, and how much of those feelings remain… well, he’s starting to get an idea.

“What do you want?” Steve forces himself to ask. There’s an edge to his voice, anger that he’s the one forced to extend an olive branch, after what  _ they’ve _ done to  _ him _ , but it cools rapidly, hopelessly, at the liquid pain in Bucky’s eyes when they open, at the way he tosses his head just a hint to the side, making his hair wave around his face, like he’s trapped.

Steve swallows. “Everything else aside, in a perfect world, what would happen here?”

Bucky looks away, at the TV. “I… would…”

His fists clench in the air before his knees. Steve watches the way light flashes, and doesn’t flash, off his fingers.

“We would all be together,” Bucky says. His voice is small. “One big bed, one apartment. Happy.”

The three of them, together. Implicitly approving of Bucky and Natasha’s relationship beside his own, as though it were of equal standing, as though she deserved Bucky as much as Steve does. And…

“You… would I- you want me to sleep with her too?”

Bucky frowns at him. “We don’t sleep together.”

“I don’t care what you call it, Buck. Whatever she-” Steve hesitates, considering and discarding several words, “whatever she wants, or doesn’t want, that was making love, or its equivalent.”

Bucky’s mouth opens to respond, and gets stuck there. “I…” He shakes his head slowly, confused.

“Tell me it didn’t feel the same,” Steve demands, voice ringing with truth. “Say you’d want anyone to see you do that, or that you’d do that with anyone else.” A horrible thought. “Say you’d do that with me.”

“I would,” Bucky shoots back, still looking stunned. “With you. It’s- about- Steve, I  _ love _ you.”

He’s clearly distraught, and Steve’s hands are shaking. “Do you see why I- why I’m-” His voice is shaking now, choked up.

Bucky’s hands are around one of his, tight as they can be without causing pain. His wide eyes prove the truth of his imploring words. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think of it that way. I’m sorry.”

He’s holding his arms out nearly straight to touch Steve, leaving that space between them like he thinks he can’t move closer. Like he’s not invited, like he’s  _ ever _ not been invited. Steve closes the distance and Bucky’s arms close around him like he can’t stand not to be touching either. They squeeze each other tightly, muffling sniffles and harsh breathing in shoulders and necks.

“I can’t lose you,” Steve forces out into Bucky’s shoulder. He knows he’s heard, anyway.

Bucky holds him tighter, and shakes his head- their heads, this close- and chokes as he answers, “I can’t _pick_.”

Steve’s heart breaks all over again.

“I love you both,” Bucky whispers. “I love you both. I can’t lose either of you.”

Steve tightens his own grip, and they lose time there, sharing warmth and love and fear and silence, until the tears have dried.

Steve does the math in his head, and the conclusion he comes to is the only one that’s sound. Compromises make no one truly happy, he thinks. Trying to voice it is like rolling shards of glass over his tongue. In the end, he forces it out, because he’s felt far worse pain for less worthy reward.

“I don’t want to see it.” It’s barely louder than a breath. “She has an apartment. You can use that.”

Bucky pulls valuable inches out of their embrace to look him in the eye. Shock, and wonder, and  _ hope _ are growing there, and it’s the last that hurts. “You- are you serious?”

“You see any other way?” Steve asks. The bitterness makes Bucky flinch.

“I- I could-” But he falters.

Steve raises one eyebrow, and Buck relents, pressing their faces together and kissing Steve’s cheek sloppily. “ _Thank you_.”

Steve closes his eyes and kisses Bucky back. It starts out chaste, yet firm, but in less than a minute Bucky’s shirt is in tatters and Steve’s hands are pressing his shoulder into the couch, his full weight bearing down. “Don’t let anyone on this floor, Jarvis,” he instructs without looking away from Bucky’s beautiful, expressive eyes and the declaration they’re making.

The elevator locks with a ding, and Steve begins reclaiming his lover inch by inch and sound by sound.

He tries not to think about whether it’ll be enough.

~ ~ * ~ ~

Time marches on. Conversation between Natasha and Steve is strained, and they avoid each other except when team business calls for their presence; then they are cool and professional. When he sees Natasha and Bucky together, Steve looks away or leaves, but things seem awkward between them, too. Not much he can do about that, Steve tells himself firmly.

There’s a tension between Steve and Bucky, too, one that Steve tries to bury by making love with Bucky every time uncertainty strikes. There are worse ways to go about things, and after a week or two (or three, okay), things are better, but not back to the way they were… _before_. They’re sleeping in their room again, as much as ever, and they spar together, and try out new places for lunch. They still talk, as relaxed as they should be. They still sit in the living room together, where Bucky reads through stack after stack of books, his brain drinking up new knowledge like it’s been thirsty for years, while Steve draws and looks out the huge windows and thinks and then draws some more. He’s got a few political cartoons published under a pseudonym, now, and he’s not nearly finished thinking about the world they both woke up in.

They meet up with the team for nights out whenever Tony announces it, because it’s always easier to just go along than to try and get out of it, and Clint acts like nothing ever happened. Clint is always the life of the party, along with Tony, so when he includes Steve and Bucky just as much as Natasha, it helps a lot, if Steve’s being honest.

Steve tries to be honest with himself. Something went wrong, and he doesn’t know how to fix it. For most of the conflicts he’s encountered in his life, he’d just have to take some time and think his options over, decide what was the right thing to do, and do it. That’s not working here, and for the life of him Steve can’t figure out anything he can do without upsetting the delicate balance they’ve all fallen into.

Until one night, he wakes up to a quiet sound from the ensuite and a silence beside him. Bucky’s gone, and Steve slips out of bed. He tiptoes to the door and peeks out.

Natasha is there, curled up in Bucky’s arms in the middle of the living room. She’s crying on Bucky’s shoulder. Steve has never seen Natasha cry before. She’s clutching Bucky, and he’s holding her tightly the way he does for Steve those times when that’s what Steve wants after a nightmare, murmuring into her ear. His metal hand slides up her back and Steve flinches, and that’s when Bucky’s eyes shoot over to him.

Bucky looked sad, but relaxed, as he comforted Natasha, but when he notices Steve he tenses, his expression going blank like when he’s going into a fight. Then his eyebrows furrow, like he’s in pain, and he loosens his grip on Natasha.

Steve realizes that Bucky’s about to let her go, and the part of him that is Natasha’s captain before Bucky’s lover has him shaking his head without thinking.

Bucky blinks in confusion, but then Natasha’s looking up at his face and Bucky’s looking at hers. Something of the previous gentleness comes back.

“Let’s go to your place,” he says quietly.

“Is that okay?” Natasha whispers. She sniffs.

Steve nods, knowing Bucky can see it in his peripheral vision. His stomach is churning, but the certainty Steve’s been searching for fruitlessly is, at this moment, firm in his chest. However he feels about her relationship with Bucky, Natasha is his friend. He can stand to let Bucky go tonight, when she clearly needs him.

He slips back inside their bedroom, listening to Bucky and his other lover leave their home in the middle of the night. He lays back down in their bed and forces himself to sleep.

The next day, the team meets up to review an infiltration plan for a Hydra outpost in the Middle East. Steve sneaks a glance at Natasha and finds that something has relaxed in her bearing, a tension that has been accumulating for weeks.

He catches Bucky sneaking a glance at him, and he manages to smile.

~ ~ * ~ ~

A few months go by, and the only thing that changes is that Bucky is okayed for field work, although he only goes on missions that require particular language skills or the whole team. Steve feels like they’re solid again. Whatever Bucky and Natasha have worked out, Steve can pretend it isn’t going on with only a little bit of willful ignorance. Otherwise, he’s back to being happy in the relationship he’d waited decades for.

If Bucky is less withdrawn at times, more readily engaged in conversation, quicker to smile slyly and surprise Steve with a practical joke, it’s all down to time. Isn’t it?

There are no more late-night, overly-competitive billiard games with Natasha in Tony’s over-sized games room. They mesh in the field, but it takes an extra half-second of thought on Steve’s part, and he knows she notices. Steve tries his best. Natasha even agrees to extra training sessions, one-on-one, when Steve requests them, trying to force his brain back into the pattern it had held so easily before, where trusting her was second nature.

It works a little. Steve would be able to fool himself, and keep fooling himself until it was real, if it weren’t for Natasha being _Natasha_. She knows exactly what’s wrong, and Steve knows that she knows, and so he can’t let it go.

Whenever they have to be together socially, with the team, their banter is creaky and hollow. She’s gone quiet around him, just enough; it’s only because he remembers how easy they used to be, how much they clicked before as soldiers in their own ways, as teammates, as people who were used to watching from the outside and seeing things others missed. They used to be such good friends, and Steve mourns that loss as much as he secretly blames her for it.

Bucky side-eyes him any time their awkwardness becomes too obvious, and it makes Steve angry and indignant. Why should he walk around feeling like the Big Bad Wolf? Why should he feel like he’s the one damaging the situation? It’s at this point in the circular thought process that resentment tends to flare, because it’s all their fault anyway and how dare Bucky blame  _ him _ for it?

But time has cooled the sparks of rage and fear, and underneath it all Steve remembers how much he truly cares about both of them. Some part of him, the part that would have accepted living next door to Bucky and never letting a soul know about their feelings, wants to bend for them, to let them both be happy even when it makes him feel like he’s dying. Still, he can’t bring himself to speak up on the subject, to either of them.

And so it goes.

Finally, something changes, and it’s not because Steve summed up the courage to change it himself. 

“What happened to the Three Musketeers?” Tony says, too loudly for the quiet afternoon Steve had been enjoying. Steve looks up from his sketch as Tony drops himself onto the couch at Steve’s side, letting out a huge sigh.

“What do you mean?” he says flatly.

“I’m exhausted, Cap,” Tony proclaims, gesturing at his slightly-rumpled bespoke suit. “I’m not in the mood to beat around the bush. You and Romanoff and Barnes. Time was you three were a terrifying murder squad of combat training and sarcasm, and now it looks like the band’s experiencing some creative differences. I don’t even know which one of you would be playing Yoko Ono in this scenario.”

Steve’s fingernail gouges a line down the side of his pencil. He scowls at Tony. “Things change.”

“Got anything to do with what I saw Barnes and Romanoff doing in the lounge the other day?” Tony rejoins airily.

Steve makes an ugly face.

Tony squints at him. “Yet, he still lives with you. And yet, you’re not secret ops best friends for life with Soviet Ninja Warrior anymore.”

Steve doesn’t need to understand what Tony’s saying to get the gist of it, usually. He can tell when he’s being mocked, had a lot of experience with it. But he also doesn’t need to hear kind words to understand Tony’s intentions, however badly they’re put across. “Don’t tell me. You solved my problem years before I tripped right into it.”

“Yes, actually,” Tony says, faux surprised, with an innocent smile.

“Well?” demands Steve. “What’s the magic formula? What have you and your-”

“Partners.”

“Partners, figured out that I haven’t?”

“You think she’s taking him away from you, don’t you? That one day he’ll wise up and leave you for someone who can give him kids, or understand him better, or maybe just because she’s better than you, huh?” Tony nods to his own words, examining Steve and leaning forward in his seat.“Well let me knock some sense into that thick skull of yours, Rogers. He’s trying his hardest to stay with you. You’re the one making it difficult. So he loves somebody else too, big deal. If he didn’t want to be with you, one hundred percent, you bet your ass he’d be gone for a ten like Romanoff. This is your relationship; if something’s hurting you, you need to fix it. Cause it sure as hell isn’t going to fix itself.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Steve protests. His palm, sweaty, slips on the pencil he’s clenching too tightly. “I can’t tell them to stop!”

Tony settles, losing some of his passionate flush. “You could. Because they love you, in their own ways, and they know they’re hurting you. So you need to either find a way to accept that your relationship has to navigate the needs and wants of three people, or call it all off.”

“That sounded almost wise,” Steve remarks after a moment’s consideration.

Tony snorts. “Yeah, well I didn’t come up with it.” He huffs, fiddles with his watch, then asks, almost shyly, “Have dinner with me tomorrow. Both of my partners are in town. It’ll be good to chill out with someone who knows about us, for once.”

He’s looking at Steve expectantly, so Steve nods. “Uh, sure.”

“Good.” Tony gets up and walks away before Steve can reply, leaving him tossed and torn in the wake of Hurricane Stark.

~ ~ * ~ ~

Steve steps off the elevator into the penthouse at 5:45 pm, knowing from experience that Pepper has strong feelings about dinner beginning at six. He greets Pepper, who’s sitting at the dining room table with a field of paperwork spread out before her, and sits quietly beside her when she gestures to him and puts a finger over her lips.

“We’re training him,” she whispers, smiling conspiratorially and nodding toward the kitchen.

Steve turns: Tony is cooking something, or baking something, looking up every few seconds at a list of instructions projected as a holgram before him.

“Dinner will be along shortly, but I’m told dessert is going to be lemon upside-down cake.” Pepper grins with satisfaction and smugness, and Steve stifles a laugh.

They make small talk for a while and Pepper organizes her papers into four stacks, eventually moving them to a table in the hall. She’s wearing wire-rimmed glasses, which Steve has never seen on her before, and she explains that she only uses them for extensive reading. They give her a striking, intelligent look above and beyond even her usual air of competence and grace, and Steve takes a mental snapshot for later sketching.

At six o’clock, Pepper checks her watch, drums her fingers against the table twice, and sighs. Tony is cursing under his breath at the bowl he’s stirring and Colonel Rhodes has yet to arrive. Pepper sits back in her seat, sneers at Steve when he looks too amused, and turns the conversation to art, their usual mealtime topic.

By 6:20, Tony has dessert in the oven and is arguing with Jarvis over the frosting. The elevator opens and Colonel Rhodes steps out, laden down with delivery bags. Steve stands to help him get things settled on the table and starts arranging the plates while Pepper greets the Colonel.

Steve doesn’t mean to pry, but he’s only ever seen Pepper and Tony together. This couple stands close, talking quietly, and kiss gently before breaking apart. Pepper goes to fish Tony from the kitchen and Colonel Rhodes shakes Steve’s hand.

They’ve only met in person briefly, and tonight Steve is invited to call the man by his first name, and extends the same offer in return. James’ handshake is dry, warm, and firm, and Steve decides he likes him and his no-nonsense demeanor in the minute they speak before the others return from the kitchen.

Dinner is hearty and tasty, expensive steakhouse fare. From James and Pepper’s good-natured jibes, Steve guessed that Tony picked the food with Steve in mind. Tony tries to bluster past the not-so-subtle accusations of favoritism and Steve avoids outright laughing only by stuffing more potatoes in his mouth.

Their dynamic is intriguing. Pepper is the only person Steve has met, to date, who can make Tony change his mind through sheer force of will, and she normally performs this Herculean task by tying the man in mental knots, leaving him incapable of refusing her whims. James plays along with Tony’s jokes and pursues a topic until he manages to trip Tony up or wear him down, pressing him respectfully until Tony gives in. It makes Steve ache in his chest watching them, reminding him of how he used to know exactly what Bucky would say or do in response to any situation.

A lot of the evening is painful to watch. Tony, James and Pepper know each other so well that conversation flows like water, around sensitive topics and roughshod through teasing and shared memories. Even when they bicker, it’s friendly and familiar. It forces Steve to remember the way he was with the Commandos, when after years of risking life and limb together, they knew each other better than they knew their own families back home.

They all include Steve easily, letting him be a refreshing addition to conversation rather than an intrusive outsider. Pepper and James are good conversationalists and pleasant and interesting to talk to. They make Tony light up in a way Steve has rarely seen. Tony is clearly the energy focal point of the room, talking more than he eats and sharing inside jokes with all three of his dinner companions, and Steve aches when he reflects on it too deeply.

Steve sees Natasha when Pepper runs circles around Tony, leaving the man confused and acquiescent. He sees Bucky when James and Tony get up to clear the table, stepping around each other in the kitchen and trading dishes with hardly a look, like they’ve been together so long that they’ve grown into each others’ movements.

And he sees something completely new when Pepper gets up to fetch a bottle of wine from the rack in the kitchen and she and James discuss their options. It’s in the way they relax around each other: James slumps out of the military straight-back he’s sported all night, and Pepper sticks her hip out unselfconsciously. They smile more freely at each other, with Tony just a few steps away, than Steve has ever seen from either of them.

He can’t help but wonder if that’s how easy, trusting and worry-free Bucky and Natasha would be if they didn’t have him to worry about.

And then James puts his hand on Pepper’s hip, leaning in, and kisses her on the cheek before picking up her pick of wine. And then he touches Tony on the small of his back as he gets a bottle opener out of a drawer.

Steve, still sitting at the dining room table, feels a burning inside, hot and bitter. Jealousy, or anger, maybe. Or both. Whatever it is, it makes his eyes sting and the garlic from the potatoes surges back into his throat.

He excuses himself, too quickly, thanking them for inviting him and for the lovely dinner and he apologizes to Tony for not staying to try dessert. He leaves, and pretends that he doesn’t see Pepper’s worry, James’ calm contemplation, or Tony’s dark eyes issuing a dare.

His blood is still burning when he wanders into the TV room, the source of the only light and sound on the communal floor. Natasha is there, watching a period piece on PBS.

Steve stands in the doorway for a while and is struck by a longing for her, for the partner who was a step behind him and to the left whenever they went into battle; a place which, previously, had been reserved for Bucky. For the friend who could handle his most headstrong moments and divert him easily once he’d run out of steam, just like Bucky. 

For the friend who refuses to back him up when he’s wrong- not like Bucky. Like herself. The woman who’d patiently watched him run around like a headless chicken for the first few months after the Battle of New York, because he refused to accept help, and insinuated herself into his life as soon as he was ready.

Steve sits beside her on the couch. She smiles in welcome, a smile that would fool anyone besides her closest teammates. The people who love her, in their own ways.

“I miss you,” he says. His voice rasps, and Natasha looks surprised. “Sorry, I-”

“I miss you too,” she says quietly.

Steve puts his arm up and they inch together. It’s not enough. He takes her hand and tucks his head into her hair. She turns her hand over in his. He breathes shallowly and thinks deeply while she watches her show.

“I haven’t been trying my hardest to make this work,” Steve admits some time later. “I still don’t know… if I’m built for… sharing. But I’m going to give it my all.”

Natasha turns her head a few degrees, sinking further into Steve’s embrace. She squeezes his hand. “I’ve never known you to fail when you put your best foot forward,” she says in a low voice.

“Me neither.”

They move even closer together. Steve tightens his arm around her. It’s the most comfortable they’ve been with each other since he found her with Bucky.

She changes the channel and Dog Cops comes on. Steve groans and Natasha giggles. He can feel her laughter in his chest, and it feels good enough to wash away all of his earlier bitterness. He pulls her closer, almost into his lap, and she tucks her head into his neck and lets her free hand rest on his forearm.

That’s where they are when Bucky finds them at the end of the episode. Steve hears him in the doorway and waves him over to Natasha’s other side. He pretends not to notice when they trade a flurry of subtle ‘is this really happening?’ ‘I know!’ looks, and continues smiling absently.

Bucky sits down right behind Natasha. It’s a three-seater couch, but there’s a foot of space between either man and an armrest, and Natasha is sandwiched between Bucky and Steve. Natasha lets out a huge, almost silent sigh, like it’s coming from somewhere deep and dark inside of her. She and Bucky move at the same time, twining their fingers together on her thigh inches away from where her other hand is clasped with Steve’s.

Bucky looks over her head at Steve. The gratitude and love in his slightly wet gaze make for the purest happiness Steve’s seen since he got out of the ice. Steve turns his attention back to the tv, enjoying the way his heart is singing in his chest and beating in time with the two incredible people beside him.

In that moment, he accepts that his next great adventure will not be fighting some new threat to the world, but discovering something that’s been right beside him all along.

~ ~ * ~ ~

 

_ “Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.”  _

― Joss Whedon


End file.
